Pick of the day

Chopin was a child prodigy, a musical innovator and one of the great composers of piano works. But he also had an eye for the ladies, from traditional beauties like his first love, the Polish vocal student Constantia Gladowska, to married, mannish cigar-smokers like George Sand. Unfortunately, many of the women he was drawn to found the reality of the consumptive artist less

attractive than the Romantic ideal. Donald Macleod looks at the relationship between music and muses in Composer of the Week (noon, Radio 3), to the accompaniment of the Polonaise Brillante in C major, Op 3, played by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax; Maurizio Pollini performing some of the Op 10 Etudes; and a 1930s recording of the Fantaisie in F minor, Op 49, featuring Solomon.

The World Service, meanwhile, is remembering Chico Mendes, the Brazilian rubber tapper turned unionist and eco-activist. Twenty years after his murder by ranchers opposed to his attempt to preserve the Amazonian rainforest, Living with Chico Mendes (10.05am and repeated) looks at Mendes's legacy.